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What the WTO Means for 2018 and Beyond: Page 2 of 2

real “way forward” is not a choice between plurilateralism or multilateralism, but reclaiming the policy space needed for development in trade. But as the years go by for the WTO (22 years and counting), the possibilities for people’s interests within the trade body have been bleaker and bleaker.

The Doha Development Agenda (DDA) has been used as a carrot for countries to hang on to the WTO, but this itself is at an uncertain juncture. In 2015, critics saw the “death” of the DDA with lack of consensus affirmation on the agenda. And in the2017 Ministerial Conference the prospects for Doha have been bleaker, with rich industrialised states and their allies having the gall to peddle changes towards even more pro-TNC e-commerce rules.

If the worse comes to worst, we may have to listen more to the movements especially in the global South who have been, for years, calling to finally “junk” the WTO.